WATER FOR ELEPHANTS- Review

Water for Elephants arrives in cinemas with the Robert Pattinson train still rolling along. I hate to ascribe locomotion to a bloke so utterly incapable of motion or emotion in his films, but hey, teenage girls will have their figures of hype. Pattinson is just one of a number of elements that come together to be better than they really should be, but he's easily the weakest link.

The story is framed a la Titanic, with nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski telling the story of the biggest circus disaster in history to the manager of a modern day circus. Then we flash back to 1931, as the fresh faced but recently orphaned Jacob runs away from the final exams of his Ivy League education in veterinary science to hop on board a train that houses the Benzini Brothers' Circus. He's soon recruited by August, the ruthless and charismatic boss, to act as a vet for the menagerie of animals on board.

In a way, it serves Water for Elephants best to compare it to a circus itself. The director is Francis Lawrence, more known for his work on Constantine and I Am Legend than for nostalgic romantic dramas like this one. The cast includes the aforementioned Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon as romantic leads, and Christoph Waltz, the Oscar-winning villain from Inglourious Basterds as August. This carnival line-up mostly works very well.

To begin, let's separate this one paragraph from the rest of the film, simply because the film mostly works. And also because this paragraph is about what doesn't work, and that's Robert Pattinson. For starters, he's miscast, in a role that plays like it belongs to an older man than Pattinson. Then again, he can't be totally absolved of blame, because as in Remember Me and the Twilight films, he's incapable of evoking any emotion that doesn't look vaguely like he's trying to remember his lines. The guy is a rubbish actor, simply enough, and whatever the contribution of his star power towards getting the film made, it doesn't counteract how much he pulls the film down.

However, he's also the reason I'm being so positive about the rest of the film, which is so buoyant that even his dead weight cannot sink it. His woodenness does make the forbidden love aspect, between his character and Witherspoon's circus wife and perpetual passenger, Marlena, slightly unbelievable. They're made to look good together by the gorgeous cinematography, but there's nothing beneath the surface- that's probably one of the greatest illusions in this circus.

The star attraction is, as expected, Christoph Waltz. As ringleader August, he is the most charismatic and well-developed villains I can remember since... well, Hans Landa, the Jew Hunter. Apparently, in the book on which the film is based, a plot point is made of the fact that August is a paranoid schizophrenic. This isn't overtly stated in the film, but you can tell Waltz took it on anyway. He's the aggressor in an abusive relationship- not with his wife, at first, but against practically everything with which he comes into contact. By turns, he is charming and gentle and winsome, but he'll stab you in the gut at the tip of a hat.

Waltz gives my favourite performance of the year so far, and you can see him holding the entire big top up all the way through the film, even seeming to try and up Pattinson's game in every scene they share. He's certainly one part of the compelling storyline, which drew me in and urged me onwards. However, the Titanic-style bookends, with the wonderful Hal Holbrook playing the elder Jacob, makes promises about a tragic denouement, and the film can't quite keep those promises in the final event. By that stage, I didn't mind as much- it kept it fresh when it could have been predictable, and the only real loss is in the way that August is short-changed by the end.

On a more thematic level, the film reawakened my interest in prohibition-era America. I wrote an essay on the period in college, and I like to watch films set around that time in American history. What's fresh about this one though is that it's not about prohibition or the Depression, per se. It's not The Untouchables or Cinderella Man, but it is a film set in that time, and is informed by that historical context all the way through.

Water for Elephants is held back by Robert Pattinson's performance in a way that's really sort of sad. He drags my rating of the film to the low end of four stars out of five, just by being there and being terrible. That still makes it a four out of five film though, and I recommend it to anyone who misses the kind of romantic drama Hollywood used to make. The romance may be the lesser part of it, but Christoph Waltz's performance and the rich and visual direction assure that it's more engaging than what first meets the eye. 

Water for Elephants is now playing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Water for Elephants, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Don't Look Directly At It- ECLIPSE Review

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. While I won't be going out of my way to spoil deliberately, there will be more SPOILERS herein than usual. it's only minor stuff, but if you don't want to see the film without knowing anything about it, don't read this review until after you've seen it. You have been warned.

If you're not caught up with the Twilight series at this stage, or my thoughts on it, you might like to go back and read my reviews of Twilight and New Moon. If you're still with me, you probably know where we stand with Eclipse. As graduation approaches for Bella Swan, she sets a date for her vampiric beau Edward to turn her into a vampire. But as a bunch of serial killings by newborn vampires reveal a sinister plot, an old enemy threatens to tear Bella and Edward's family apart.

You're here for one thing if you know my previous form on this series, and that's to see me take the piss out of this film. There are certain expectations of my reviews that are all too easy to meet in a series like this. For starters, if Bella was a codependent mess in New Moon, she's a manipulative attention whore in this one. The love triangle from New Moon, seemingly resolved when she chose Edward the vampire's sparkling over Jacob the werewolf's robust and puppy-like devotion, spills over here simply by her prolonging it.

You can bandy around epithets like "prick-tease" and sound like you hate women, but it's just a matter of hating Bella. Moreover, she's still so selfish and introspective that she can't account for any of her more normal loved ones beyond saying "I'll think of something" when asked how they'll deal with her new lifestyle. There's a scene when one of her fellow students gives a speech about kids being asked what they want to be when they grow up and saying things like "rock-star" or "princess".

Bella sits uncomfortably in that scene because it's like everyone knows that the character has just graduated from high school but she's still jumping up and down, clapping her hands and going "I wanna be a vampire and get married!" over and over. To Kristen Stewart's credit, she still hasn't been sunk by this dead weight character, but she's still slumming it in this role. Leave scripts like these to Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, who can't really make characters sympathetic either.

If this is Eclipse's biggest problem, then it doesn't bring the film down nearly as much as it did in the previous instalments. This is clearly down to a handover in direction to horror director David Slade, who ramps up the horrific elements as much as he can within the strictures of capturing the teen audience who lap this shit up. There's a palpable tension that was missing in either one of the previous Twilight films, and he finally makes a couple of moments that are dreamy rather than dreary. Hats off also to cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, for making everything look wonderful from rain-soaked city streets to snow-capped mountains, via a lot of sunlit meadows.

That last bit almost sounded positive, so I think the game is up. Bottom line is, I didn't like Eclipse, but I did think it was a much better film than I or anyone else of a sound mind had expected. It never bored me like Twilight did, and it never made me despair for humanity like New Moon. At its heart, there's still a bad story by a worse author, but Slade salvages everything he can from it to make it a more entertaining prospect than Summit has given us in the last three years. He brings tertiary characters to the fore with some interesting flashbacks that less enterprising directors might have traded up for multiple lascivious shots of Taylor Lautner's torso, and finally overcomes the hilariously bad speedy-vampire effects with a much more sensible model.

Sadly, for all of his good work, it's all too easy to believe the rumours that he was locked out of the editing suite late in production. For me, this is most obvious from the soundtrack. Record companies shift huge numbers of the soundtrack album CD and download just by virtue of the Twilight brand, but more than ever before, the selected songs are totally discordant with the action. This would benefit massively from a proper score, by a composer- you don't need John Williams, just something more tailored to the action than Florence + The Machine or Muse. The effect here is like Spielberg signing over Schindler's List to the Village People for the final sound mix.

Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are still piss-poor actors, and the real talent like Anna Kendrick and Billy Burke are still in thankless roles, but the thrust of Eclipse is very much towards something different. The message-driven plotting of the series isn't ever going to allow sex scenes, even though fellow Kevin Smith fans would probably agree that the Chasing Amy solution would solve everyone's problems in that tent scene with the three leads. And even with Melissa Rosenberg, a scribe who actually does emoticons in her scripts, still on writing duties, the work put into this one is evident.

Is it still giving a damaging message to young women? Probably, but there's at least less of Bella being subservient to a guy who could go nuts and kill her, that unintended domestic abuse parallel that made New Moon so fucking interminable. What does get ramped up is Edward and Jacob being over-protective of Bella, at which point many of the females in the audience need to wake up and think about this. Without any allegations of being shallow, if you ever encountered this level of interference from any boyfriend in real life, you'd want to get the fuck out of that relationship. It only further reinforces Bella as a blank surrogate for female readers or viewers rather than a likable character.

Chiefly, I think I took to Eclipse because it feels like an ending. With red-headed Victoria seemingly having ran so much that she morphed into Bryce Dallas Howard, that subplot is finally brought to a conclusion. I don't need to see some of the frankly bat-shit insane stuff that happens in Stephanie Meyer's final book, and I wish they'd ended on a relative high with this one. Instead, they're proving that anything Harry Potter can do, Twilight can do worse, by splitting Breaking Dawn into two films instead of taking the chance to cut some of the crazier shit out of the 800-page book.

The problems with the so-called Twilight saga are on-going, but Eclipse manages to leave its predecessors in the shade as a much more bearable adaptation than you'd expect. If Summit had given Slade free rein and adapted the source material a little more radically, this might have been the Prisoner of Azkaban moment of the series. They didn't, so it's difficult to know who to recommend it to. It's not good enough to get skeptics to go back and endure the first two, and the fans will be going to see this one anyway. For what it is, it's a lot more ambitious than it needs to be, and there's little doubt in my mind that this will be seen as the best of the series when it finally ends.

Eclipse is showing in cinemas nationwide from July 9th.
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If and when you see Eclipse, why not share your comments on the film and/or my review below? If you think a semi-positive review is justification to go back and check out the first two films, it's really not.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Round the Twist

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. Given how I'm talking about twist endings, there will be some spoilers here for Remember Me. It's been on release for a good while now, but if you haven't seen it yet and want to, do not read the review.

If you're M. Night Shyamalan, your entire oeuvre revolves around the twist ending. Hell, even your upcoming Last Airbender film will probably follow suit ("The air is bending US!") if his previous works are anything to go by. Seeing as how most film-makers are not M. Night Shyamalan, you'd think they'd be halfway competent at doing twists every once in a while.

And yet rattling around multiplexes at the moment are romantic drama Remember Me and sci-fi action flick Repo Men, both of which resort to lame twists to bolster audience response in the final reel. As mentioned above, there will be spoilers for Remember Me in the review, but the Repo Men review will remain largely spoiler-free, as usual- that comes first...
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Repo Men takes place in the near future, where shady medical insurers The Union provide the world with synthetic organ transplants on the terms of a strict payment plan. If you fall behind on payments, the eponymous bailiffs will track you down and take your organs. One of the repo men, Remy, has an accident at work that wasn't his fault, but rather than getting in touch with Claims Direct, he's saddled with a payment plan on his replacement organs. He's also grown a conscience in the process, and seeks to bring down The Union.

Does the beginning of that sound familiar? You may have seen Repo! The Generic Opera, an ultimately ephemeral attempt to make a Rocky Horror equivalent for the torture porn generation. Still, it's succeeded on a moderate level as a cult classic and has Anthony Head, which is always good. This only has Jude Law. But then both films were pipped to the post by a great gag in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, (and Repo Men overtly references said gag) so let's get that argument out of the way before it even transpires.

As mentioned, this does have Jude Law. The man is anathema to me except for a few select roles, including his recent turn as Watson in Sherlock Holmes, which is probably the best screen version of that character ever. Here, Law never convinces as a gung-ho action hero of the American ilk- he's too smarmy and posh. And it's a problem that he's less likeable than Liev Schrieber, because Schreiber is playing one of the antagonists.
One thing that does make Repo Men worth a watch is the turn by Forrest Whittaker. The man has made some mootable efforts both before and after his Oscar win for playing Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, but he's a joy to watch here. His character is like a cross between the buddy cop and the over-the-top villains you'd see in 80s action films. Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz meets Vernon Wells in Commando, and just as funny. Others might sleepwalk through a role like this, but Whittaker actually makes it feel like a bold choice for an actor of his calibre. And kudos to him for it- what the hell have Halle Berry or Adrien Brody done lately?

Sadly, there's not much else to recommend about the film. Like its equally grisly forebear (only without the songs), it falls short of the concept's inherent potential by deploying excessive visual stimulus and next to no substance. The future may not be bright, but does it have to look like Blade Runner with product placement? A few moments are reminiscent of the brainless fun of Crank and Shoot 'Em Up, but these pale next to a misjudged social parallel that's already been explored in last year's Saw VI. Healthcare sucks in America! We get it! Let Obama sort it and stop making sub-par movies.

The lovingly orchestrated violence goes remiss in Repo Men because it's taking itself too seriously. Screenwriters Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner have contrived a few scenes you won't see elsewhere this year, like a 9-year-old surgeon replacing a knee-cap and some unexpected typewriter violence, but its offset by an annoying and smug narration from Jude Law and that downright worthless twist ending I mentioned above. And the ending is borrowed from a much better Terry Gilliam film, which I won't name here. Ultimately disappointing stuff, although that great turn from Forrest Whittaker might be worth a watch once the film comes on telly.
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Last warning- here there be spoilers. Remember Me is the latest vehicle for Bicycle Seat Face himself, Robert Pattinson. He plays Tyler, a tearaway university student who nihilistically romps around New York with his family issues in full view. After incurring police brutality from a widowed detective, Tyler's frat boy roommate sets him up with Ally, the detective's daughter, in a plot to seduce her for revenge. Or something. Tyler and Ally pontificate on the importance of living for the moment as they grow closer, because life can be too short. And if that's not foreboding, I don't know what is.

Why the spoilers? For a change, I can't really talk about this film without talking about the ending, because it changes so much of how you view it. For the most part, I'll honestly say that "RPattz" hasn't been in a film this good since Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which isn't really saying much, especially as he's still rubbish at acting. But this ending can't even be defended as a tribute to New York and its people's perserverance, as its people in this film are all white and middle-class. Basically, Tyler reaches a turning point in his daddy issues and finds happiness with Ally. As he goes to a meeting in his father's office building, it's revealed that his father works in one of the Twin Towers, and the date is September 11th 2001.

I'd been informed of this twist in advance, and indeed only saw the film to confirm it actually existed. Sadly, it does, and the film-makers were actually brazen enough to evoke the biggest tragedy of the 21st century in a cloying and utterly reprehensible twist. As Kick-Ass has shown, "morally reprehensible" is a phrase that critics use to say "I didn't like this and you definitely shouldn't", so I won't say that outright. But you judge for yourself, whether this largely soggy romantic drama is wrong to use real human tragedy to masquerade as something more profound or emotional.

All of this said, as soggy romantic dramas go, it's not all that bad. Excluding the last five or so minutes (yes, it really comes into play that late), it's a reasonably engaging romance, which is quite an achievement when the lead character is a teaky RPattz. The guy still can't act, as shown most potently in a showdown with his screen father, a surprisingly good Pierce Brosnan. Arms firmly by his sides, he mopes uncomfortably as Brosnan brings a real energy to the argument. Emilie de Ravin does a good job of romancing her driftwood co-star too.

It's not without flaccid character stereotypes though, with Chris Cooper reprising his awkward father figure from American Beauty and Tate Ellington appearing on my radar simply to annoy me as a wacky comic-relief frat boy. I do concede that Ruby Jerins isn't bad as the token younger sister, she's just poorly utilised. As I've said though, the film didn't really raise my hackles until the last five minutes. Inoffensive is exactly the word to use, in direct contrast to the sheer affront of the tacked-on 9/11 twist. I could have respected it a lot more if they'd made the exact same point without such an epic and gratuitous device- the film opens with a young Ally's mother being mugged and murdered by random thugs, why would an ending reflecting that with Tyler have been any less profound?

That ending notwithstanding, Remember Me is still a film that is utterly overshadowed by its competition in the cinemas at the moment. Cemetery Junction is an infinitely more moving and enjoyable portrait of teenage rebellion. Clash of the Titans isn't a masterpiece, but it doesn't invoke Greek mythology as clumsily or as broodingly as this. Kick-Ass is less "morally reprehensible". Vested in a vehicle for Robert Pattinson, the better aspects of the story never really come forward. And sadly, so much of what was decent about the prior 100 minutes is wiped out by the last 5. The highest praise I can grant it as a whole is "almost passable".
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Although I reckon you're best off waiting for DVD at the very least, both Remember Me and Repo Men are both playing in cinemas nationwide. If you've seen either of them, why not share your thoughts on the films, the reviews and on Snape killing Dumbledore/other twists in the comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Bored Shirtless

There isn't an awful lot of commenting going on on this blog anyway, but in advance, here are some popular rebuttals I won't be accepting about today's post.

1. You're not the target audience.
2. By slating a film I and millions of others like, you're stifling my individuality.
3. You're jealous of the manly abs on show.

Point 3 is particularly amusing- like saying I must hate the Super Mario Brothers because they can jump higher than I can. But as you may have garnered, I've been to see New Moon, the second film in the apparent "Twilight Saga". As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion on here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.


So this film being everywhere at the moment, you probably know the story. Bella Swan is a high-school girl who's dating the practically-neutered vampire, Edward Cullen. At the beginning of New Moon, an altercation with Edward's brother falling off the wagon leaves Edward fearing he can't protect Bella from his blood-sucking brethren anymore. He subsequently leaves Bella in a prolific sulk and he and his family move on. Enter the newly... how do you describe someone becoming more wild? Oh, that's a good word- enter the newly bewildered Jacob Black, Bella's best friend, who's gained a supernatural hang-up of his own since becoming more integrated with his Quileute tribe of Native American werewolves. That the film takes about an hour and a half to get to this most elementary level of plot may lead you to suspect that the film ain't that great.

The truth is, I can't hate the films just because of the hype. Twilight was nowhere near as bad as the worst films of last year and New Moon isn't nearly as bad as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It's curious that it's so easy to make that comparison, given how this series has proportionately the same effect on the female filmgoer as Transformers has on the male filmgoer, and both are really nothing to write home about. And thus it would be easier to magnify the flaws of this film just to rail against it. While I'm not entirely willing to take that route, it is fairly clear that this is not the film that its more militant fans are claiming. The Mormon agenda of sexual abstinence remains at the fore throughout the film, but this is not a film that sends a good message to young women. The aforementioned sulk comes out of Bella feeling that she is worthless without a supernatural beau. Although she attends high school, she has no clear plans for the future except for going where her bloke goes. I'm no manner of feminist but that, to me, seems pretty bad.


So the next thing Bella does is go out and become an adrenaline junkie, undertaking reckless activities because they give her hallucinations of her departed ex, staring blankly and warning her to stop. I'm not a doctor either, but that also seems bad. I'm actually pretty sure that counts as some kind of schizophrenia. In the course of that, she grows closer to Jacob, which I presume has nothing to do with the fact that Taylor Lautner has spent most of his time since the last film in the gym, and not enough learning to act. While Kristen Stewart is a very capable actress with limited material, Lautner's idea of intensity, coupled with his canine nature, put me in mind of Dug the talking dog from Up. He could feasibly have pounced Bella at any moment and said "I have just met you, and I love you!" Even more goofy is the necessary adoption of Stephanie Meyer's self-masturbatory notion that these buff young men must wander around shirtless and wearing jean-shorts, making the tribe look like a werewolf boy-band. I hear they do a mean cover of "Bad Moon Rising".

With all this shirtless nonsense going on, there's little screentime for the female audience's pale and wooden idol Robert Pattinson. Edward's going-away is the impetus for the whole plot, so we're mercifully spared most of the Hayden Christensen School of Acting. He was an unproven actor before this, and he remains unproven. And worse, he occasionally does this tic when he's acting like he's in pain that's more akin to someone spontaneously ejaculating- where was Andy Samberg in this film? That's not to drub all of the cast- as I've said many times, Kristen Stewart is a remarkable actress who makes the best of what paltry amount of character development she's given. She's more watchable than any character as two-dimensional as Bella has any real right to be, carrying the film through much of its stultifying running time. Things only really kick into gear in the last half an hour, much like the first film, but with much more promising results.


For the last half hour is when the Volturi show up. The Volturi are vampire royalty based in Italy, and they're headed by Michael Sheen! Michael Sheen! Brilliant actor, and utterly brilliant in this as Aro, a kind of vampiric Tony Blair with no regard for human life. And he's in the film for... all of ten minutes. That, for me, was New Moon's biggest crime. For all of the angst and aimless wandering, there was nothing worse than seeing this character and this performance wasted in the way it was. Similarly, Dakota Fanning turns in her only performance to date that didn't make me cringe as a young but scarily powerful vampire charged with enforcing the family's will. The worst thing about their negligible screentime is that I'll actually look forward to more Volturi in the two films that are left to go, and I suspect they'll receive little prominence. Still, you can't judge these things sight unseen, and that was enough to get me in the cinema to see New Moon.

I've already said I didn't hate the film, but neither is it very good. While its predecessor was an indie film, Twilight also paid for most of Summit Entertainment's output for the next two years, and the glossy blockbuster look and marketing campaign for New Moon jars slightly. It's not an action film, nor should it be. Director Chris Weitz does bring more CGI eye-candy to proceedings than Catherine Hardwicke did, and the fight scenes that are included are a marked improvement upon what has come before. But that can't justify the film as what it seems to have become. It's a fantasy romance and it didn't seem comfortable as a low-budget indie film, nor does it entirely fit into the blockbuster mould. David Slade is taking the helm for the next film, due out in July, and with his credits I can imagine the film changing again, taking more of a horror slant. This kind of inconsistency can't really be good for a series that has weak source material to begin with, especially as screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has resolutely plowed through two helm changes without changing her approach by one iota- "I'm not some car you can fix up, I'm never gonna run right" sounds more like a bad song lyric than a credible piece of dialogue.


The acting is largely wooden, the writing is vanilla and uninspired, and they still haven't got the tone down, but New Moon isn't any worse than its predecessor. It's definitely not going to convert anyone who doesn't like the series, to whom this will still be the film about the werewolf boy-band and their mortal enemies, the sparkly vampires. But I can honestly say I was expecting a lot worse. The fans of the books seem to enjoy the films, and fair play to them, but they could really hope for something better. The film's ending best summarises the polarising nature of this series- it's a cliffhanger that made several people in the cinema squeal in delight and everyone else rush for the exit. It's not out-and-out bad, but we're halfway through the planned four films and it looks doubtful this series will leave any lasting impression after it's over.

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I certainly feel I've given much harsher reviews than that, but the day the Twilight series really gets me to sit up and pay attention will be the day it takes the central love affair a lot less seriously. I wish half the people who go to see New Moon would go to see An Education, a film that deals with the intensity of first love, and the loss of that love, with much more aptitude than Stephanie Meyer could ever muster. Still, if you've seen the film, and want to share your thoughts without telling me I'm out-and-out wrong, why not comment below?

Next up, it's coming up to Christmas, so I'll finally be taking a look at Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol and giving that a critique, as well as talking about various other festive films.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.